{"id":777309,"date":"2026-07-03T08:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/777309\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T08:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:59:09","slug":"four-time-tour-de-france-winner-chris-froome-confirms-cycling-retirement-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/777309\/","title":{"rendered":"Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome confirms cycling retirement | Cycling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Froome, the four-time winner of the Tour de France<\/a>, who also took the 2018 Giro d\u2019Italia and 2011 and 2017 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a titles, has confirmed his retirement from professional cycling.<\/p>\n

The longest retirement saga in the sport finally ended on Friday when the 41-year-old, speaking in Barcelona at the Grand D\u00e9part of this year\u2019s Tour, said: \u201cUnfortunately, there was that fall last summer. That wasn\u2019t the way I wanted it to end. But even then, I knew it was over.\u201d Asked if he had now definitively retired from racing, he replied: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Froome crashed while training<\/a> last August and was airlifted to hospital with five broken ribs, a spine fracture, a collapsed lung and a pericardial rupture, a life-threatening tear to the sac that surrounds the heart.<\/p>\n

In his final race as a professional, the Tour of Poland, two weeks earlier, he finished 68th overall. It was symptomatic of a declining career in which his final Grand Tour result, at the 2022 Vuelta, was 113th place.<\/p>\n

Froome won the Tour four times<\/a> during his 11 seasons with Team Sky, between 2010 and 2020. As team leader, he dominated the French race and, for a period in 2018 he even held all three Grand Tour titles<\/a>, the Giro, Tour and Vuelta, simultaneously.<\/p>\n

But his hopes of taking a fifth Tour win were blighted by crashes. The first came in 2019, when he was hospitalised after hitting a wall during a time-trial reconnaissance at the Criterium du Dauphin\u00e9<\/a>. That signalled the imminent end of his and Team Sky\u2019s domination, with a youthful Tadej Pogacar coming to the fore the following summer. Despite that, Froome signed a lucrative contract with the now defunct Israel-Premier Tech team in 2021, but never regained his winning form, slipping into anonymity and even being questioned publicly by billionaire team owner Sylvan Adams, after he was left out of the Tour team in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe signed Chris to be the leader of our Tour team and he\u2019s not even here, so that cannot be considered value for money,\u201d Adams said. \u201cChris isn\u2019t a symbol. He isn\u2019t a PR tool. So no, I couldn\u2019t say he\u2019s value for money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Froome will be on hand during this year\u2019s Tour, as a brand ambassador to race sponsors Skoda, to watch Pogacar target a record-equalling fifth win. \u201cHe\u2019s a lot younger than I was when I was trying to go for my potential No 5,\u201d Froome told AFP. \u201cHe\u2019s had an amazing season so far this year and it\u2019s going to be hard to see anything stopping him at this rate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he\u2019s able to stay on his bike, if he can stay out of trouble, just the way he\u2019s moving this year, it looks as if he\u2019s got this one in the bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout his own period of domination, Froome had to contend with sustained scepticism from the French public and media, which peaked in the spring of 2018 after he received an adverse analytical finding for the use of salbutamol.<\/p>\n

Chris Froome runs without his bike up Mont Ventoux after crashing during the famous 12th stage of the 2016 Tour de France. Photograph: St\u00e9phane Mantey\/Pool\/EPA<\/p>\n

Supported by Sky, he contested the case and was ultimately exonerated. But the controversy tarnished his reputation and fuelled further scepticism towards his achievements, particularly in France.<\/p>\n

In July, that year he responded by saying: \u201cI said I would never dishonour the yellow jersey and my results would stand the test of time. I won\u2019t \u2013 and they will.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this sport. I am passionate about the Tour. To win any race based on a lie would \u2013for me \u2013 be a personal defeat. I could never let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Froome, the four-time winner of the Tour de France, who also took the 2018 Giro d\u2019Italia and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-777309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}